I wanted to shake my head, but that wouldn't have helped. In hindsight, so much seemed so clear, but that sight had been a long time in coming, because I had known, had fought the understanding, that nothing indeed would be the same.
I flicked off the reading screen. I had already absorbed too much history and background.
When I finally drifted toward sleep, the arcs of fire were pure gold - not golden-red. They were like golden chains, spinning out through black space to ensnare me, to shackle me to ... I didn't know what.
'NO!'
I sat up in the net, shaking it against its anchors, and bounced from the bottom to the top and back again, feeling like a beaker of alcardia shaken so long that it foamed tastelessly.
I was beginning to understand, beginning to comprehend why I had not wanted to understand - and now I felt as though something were trying to ensnare me. The new world in which I was caught?
After a time, I slept - fitfully at best - in a dim darkness so unlike the niellen depths through which arcs of fire had reached toward me.
40
All life is sorrow.
After a quick shower and a change into clean coveralls, I sat in the canteen alone, eating curried Dorchan strip beef and noodles, and sipping orange tea.
Sanselle's image appeared beside me in the canteen. She seldom called up an image from my commpak. Her face was pale, her eyes slightly swollen. 'Tyndel ... cargo lock three ...'
The image vanished.
I pulled free of the sticktites and quickly disposed of the remains of my meal, then flung myself into the corridor toward the transverse shaft - number four - that would drop me closest to lock three. I was supposed to be off-shift, but the strain in Sanselle's voice negated that.
What could have upset her? Why had she called, instead of Gerbriik? Had something happened to the maintenance officer?
Whatever it had been, it wasn't Gerbriik, because he and Sanselle stood anchored in the corridor by the lock. A cold tension flowed between them.
The lights on the lock control panel, and the dull and muffled thud, confirmed that an inbound ship was docking.
Both faces blanked as they saw me. Gerbriik's visage remained impassive, unlike Sanselle's. The darkness remained behind her eyes, and her cheeks were blotchy.
'I'm sorry,' she said softly.
Sorry? For what? 'What happened?'
'There's been ... an accident,' Gerbriik answered, his voice edged. 'Fersonne - she was hit by the Hook's braking blast.'
Sanselle nodded slowly, her eyes preternaturally bright.
'How... ?' I didn't understand how it could have happened. ESAs weren't allowed with incoming ships. Fersonne? She was so careful, more so than either Sanselle or me.
'The usual for something like this.' Gerbriik didn't look at me. 'The Hook arrived early, with less than five minutes' notice. She came in too hot. I called Fersonne to get inside. I told her to leave everything and get in. She torqued up the thrust on her broomstick to hurry. She was on her tether and tried to use it to swing her in toward the open lock. The Hook was hot and had to brake later and longer. Fersonne tried to kill her thrust, but she'd been out more than half a shift, and the gas reservoir of the broomstick was low and gave out. She tried to reel herself back in, to shorten the arc. She wasn't fast enough, and the shorter arc sped up the swing - right into the Hook's blast.' He shrugged. 'A few degrees either way and nothing would have happened.'
A few degrees ... a few moments ... if I had been a few moments faster in Hybra, Foerga might have lived. If Fersonne hadn't extended for the bonus. Or for me? If ... but ifs don't change death.
I glanced around, half expecting to see the brown eyes looking at me, accepting me. I just saw the gray of the cargo corridors and lock doors. My eyes went back to Gerbriik.
'Even an outside suit won't protect you from the ion exhaust of a needle ship's thrusters.' Gerbriik's voice was flat. 'There's nothing ...'
Sanselle shook her head.
So did I. It didn't make sense - but it did. The unexpected, combined with a lot of little errors... and Fersonne was dead. The least likely to be killed that way. Perhaps the best person I knew on the station, or since I'd left Dorcha. Dead.
I could feel the chill beyond the thick composite of the hull, and the chill rising within me, like the brume off Deep Lake just before it froze.
'I'm getting the sled,' Sanselle offered as she glided away down the corridor.
'The sled?'
'You still need to off-load the Hook,' Gerbriik said slowly.
Fersonne was dead - she'd just been killed - and we needed to off-load the incoming needle ship. Life - even demon life -went on.
'Yes, ser.' My voice was flat.
'I couldn't have known,' Gerbriik said quietly. 'I wish I could have.'
'I know, ser.' I was angry, but I wasn't angry with the maintenance officer. How could I have been? Gerbriik was a perfectionist. That might have been what killed Fersonne. Because he worried, he'd asked her to hurry. Because she'd hurried ... That was the awful irony. Because he had been concerned, he'd set up the coincidences that had killed her, and he'd worry the situation to death, perhaps his own death, over the years ahead. 'I know,' I repeated, not knowing where to direct that formless rage that seethed within me. 'I know ...'
The faint hum of the cargo sled rode over the silence. Sanselle guided it along the side of the cargo corridor and brought it to a halt less than three meters from me.
'Still waiting for them to unlock?' she asked.
I could almost read her thoughts from her face. They've messed up everything else ... what else should we expect?
The lock hissed open, and we were showered with ice crystals and hull-chilled air. The nanite fields that completed the seals didn't stop heat loss. Not much.
The Hook's third stood amid the swirling ice mists that cleared from the open cargo lock, waiting expectantly, as if he expected us to move to him. After a moment, Gerbriik did. Sanselle and I followed.
'Treat this off-load carefully. It's special equipment they need at the Alaric orbit station. They pulled us in to bring it out.' He winced. 'There's a great deal of metal there. It's expensive metal.'
Gerbriik nodded as if the fact that the cargo contained expensive metal explained everything, justified Fersonne's death. I knew he didn't feel quite that way, but I wouldn't have been surprised if the third officer did. We all felt the deaths of those close to us, but merely regretted and justified the deaths of those we did not know. Only in small communities was it different ...
At that thought, I wondered. Hybra had been a small community, and I doubted there had been much slowing of the town from my disappearance and Foerga's death.
The third returned the nod, then eased back from the lock door. I wanted to grab him and stuff him outside without a suit. Life goes on, and the careless ones don't even know the loss they create.
'It's all yours.' Gerbriik looked at the two of us, then turned in midair and glided away without another word.
'He isn't going to say anything about Fersonne?' My eyes flicked sideways to Sanselle.
'Commander Maestros already let the Web jockey know over the comm.'
'And no one said anything?'
'What could they say? It wasn't their fault, not exactly, anyway,' pointed out Sanselle. 'They never would have picked her up on their sensors ... not quickly enough.'
I swallowed. Personal responsibility again. Fersonne had been responsible for her own safety, and she had failed. I wanted to hammer the bulkhead with my bare fist.